I can't claim to be an expert on the history of cannibalism or
capital punishment.
But I have read a number of essays and books on the subject
for my own entertainment.
I draw on those readings for what you see here.
Consider this essay to be informal speculation rather than the
result of scholarly research.

Cannibalism and Boiling Alive

When most people think of humans cooking inside large pots,
they think of cannibalism.
Stories, comic books, television programs, and movies all tend
to portray a similar theme:
missionaries or other strangers who are captured by a primitive
tribe and cooked alive in a large iron cauldron.

There are many different ways to cook food.
Why should it be so common for people to associate pots
with cannibalism?
Media exposure and tradition may be one powerful reason.
But even more likely is the natural association between
cooking and pots.
Pots have been used to cook all kinds of food for most
of mankind's history.
It is only logical to assume that those who may have
cooked humans used pots to do it.

Imagine my surprise after reading some historical
accounts of cannibalism to find that there is no
evidence that real cannibals ever cooked people
whole inside pots (let alone alive).
It appears that the common image of a missionary
simmering in a big pot is purely myth.
That is not to say that cannibalism is a myth; it
is not.
Nor does it mean that cannibals did not use pots for cooking flesh.
There are simply no reliable accounts of cannibals
killing victims by boiling them alive or even boiling
victims whole after they had died.

There is plenty of evidence that cannibalism has
been practiced throughout human history.
Archeologists have discovered human bones in
cooking hearths in China that are as old as 500,000 years.
Nor has cannibalism been confined to one particular region.
At various times in history, there is evidence of cannibalism on
all continents.
However, archelogical information does not provide
any information about motivation or technique.
For this information, we rely on first hand accounts
of cannibalism.

Most first hand information about cannibalism in recent
times was compiled from the accounts of explorers
and missionaries working in the 17th through the 20th
centuries.
These men and women were part of the mass colonization
of Africa, the South Pacific, and the western hemisphere during
the height of European imperialism.
According to the accounts, cannibalism was common in
some parts of these areas.
It is hard to guarantee the accuracy of these reports.
But most historians consider them to be genuine.

The first surprising fact of these accounts is that cannibalism
in many cultures was not commonly motivated by a lack of other food.
Instead, cannibalism was often practiced for religious reasons,
as a by-product of war, or as a special addition to an otherwise
conventional diet.
In certain religious ceremonies, the sacrifice of a human
was made more significant to the gods by eating some portion
of the victim after death.
In war, some cultures came to believe that by eating your
vanquished enemy, his best qualities where transferred to you.
But some of the most disturbing accounts of cannibalism
where motivated by the third reason: human meat in some of
these societies was considered a rare delicacy that could
enhance an otherwise
plain diet.
Under the first two circumstances, torture of the victim
played little or no part in the act of eating human flesh.
As we shall see, that is not true about the third.

By and large, most victims of cannibalism where killed before
being cooked and eaten.
This is definitely true in religious ceremonies and in battle.
But when a group of humans came to crave the taste of
human flesh for its own sake, it appears depravity and
torture were much more common.
In this circumstance, some victims were indeed cooked
alive.
Here is an account of a missionary, David Cargill, about his
experiences in the islands of Figi in 1838 [1]:

Some of the circumstances connected with the immolation
of human victims are most revolting and diabolical.
The passions of the people during the performance of these
horrible rites seem inflamed by a fiendish ferocity which
is not exceeded by anything we have ever heard in the annals
of human depravity.

When about to offer a human sacrifice, the victim is selected
from among the inhabitants of a distant territory, or is
procured by negotiation from a tribe which is not related
to the persons about to sacrifice.
The victim is kept for some time, and supplied with
abundance of food, that he may become fat.

When about to be immolated, he is made to sit on the ground
with his feet under his thighs and his hands placed before him.
He is then bound so that he cannot move a limb or a joint.
In this posture he is placed on stones heated for the
occasion (and some of them are red-hot), and then covered
with leaves and earth, to be roasted alive.
When cooked, he is taken out of the oven and, his face and
other parts being painted black, that he may resemble
a living man ornamented for a feast or for war, he is
carried to the temple of the gods and, being still retained
in a sitting posture, is offered as a propitiary sacrifice.

These ceremonies being concluded, the body is carried beyond
the precints of the consecrated ground, cut into quarters,
and distributed among the people; and they who were the
cruel sacrificers of its life are also the beastly devourers
of its flesh.

The unnatural propensity to eat human flesh exists among
them in its most savage forms.
The Feegeeans eat human flesh, not merely from a principle
of revenge, nor from necessity, but from choice.
Captives and strangers are frequently killed and eaten...
The flesh of women is preferred to that of men, and when
they have a plentiful supply the head is not eaten.
In some cases the heart is preserved for months...

Still, despite the obvious cruelty of this account, these
missionaries and others make no mention of cooking people
in large pots.
Further, where victims were cooked alive, all of the accounts
recite roasting as the technique of choice (usually using a
shallow pit lined with hot stones as described above).

Of course, small pots where used to cook humans in some
cannibalistic societies.
There are many accounts of South American tribes who,
after killing, disemboweling, and butchering their victims,
made stew from their flesh.
But these were small cook pots used for preparing ordinary
sized portions.
Giant pots are never mentioned.

If some cannibals practiced cruel torture on their victims,
why didn't they boil people alive in huge pots?
We can only speculate on the answer to that question.

One reason may be the lack of large cauldrons to cook their victims.
Many of the tribes where cannibalism was reported did not
have advanced metal making capability.
Large iron cauldrons were probably out of their technological reach.
However, large pots could be made using clay pottery techniques.
Many South American tribes produced very large and beautiful
works of clay or stone.
Large cooking pots should have been within the reach of these societies.

The most likely reason boiling alive was not a part of cannibalism
is that it is not a particularly practical or appealing way to
cook whole humans. It is not practical because cooking humans
alive in a pot presents a number of challenges to the would-be cannibal.
It is not appealing because boiling large cuts of meat is not
generally considered tasteful whether you are a cannibal or not.

Discounting cannibalism for the moment, it is very uncommon
for humans to cook any meat alive (lobsters are the only exception
I have come across).
It is simply easier to prepare and cook meat that is dead.
Even when animals are cooked whole, they are usually skinned,
washed, and disemboweled first.
Cooking an animal alive provides no opportunity to properly
prepare the meat and this may be dangerous to those who eat
it later.
Cannibals who chose to boil their victims alive might have had
to worry about the abdominal cavity bursting under pressure
due to the lack of disembowelment, or the victim excreting
wastes into their carefully prepared soup.
These problems don't arise when using other cooking techniques.

Boiling is most often used to prepare soups and stews.
These recipes always call for meat that has been chopped into
small, manageable chunks.
Larger cuts of meat are usually baked or roasted.
These observations seem equally applicable to cannibalism.
Large pieces of meat boiled in water until they are gray are not appetizing
to many people.
I doubt that whole humans boiled alive in a pot were appetizing
to cannibals.

Whatever the reasons, history seems to show that cannibals did
not boil people alive in pots.
Our favorite jungle stories appear to be just that: fiction.
For actual accounts of men and women being boiled alive,
we must leave behind cannibalism and look into the
history of "civilized" societies and their modes of punishing
criminals and traitors.

Boiling as a Form of Capital Punishment

A wide variety of hideous tortures have been used throughout
civilized history to end the lives of criminals and traitors.
There seems to be no end to the list of diabolical methods
used to put people to death legally under strict governments
or by those pressing a cause.
In my opinion, one of the most horrible modes of execution
commonly practised in olden times was boiling prisoners
to death.

This mode of punishment, although not as common as other
forms of execution, was practiced widely throughout the
heart of civilized societies in the first and second millenia
and earlier.
There is documented evidence that boiling alive was used
as a form of execution in Europe, Asia, and North Africa
during the Middle Ages through the 18th century.

Some of the earliest accounts of boiling prisoners to death
come from China.
There are many early woodcut drawings of prisoners meeting their
end in pots of boiling water.
The following excerpt was taken from the writings of Sun Tzu
on the Art of War [4]:

12. Having DOOMED SPIES, doing certain things openly for purposes of deception,
and allowing our spies to know of them and report them to the enemy...
Li I-chi played a somewhat
similar part in 203 B.C., when sent by the King of Han to open peaceful negotiations
with Ch`i. He has certainly more claim to be described a "doomed spy", for the king
of Ch`i, being subsequently attacked without warning by Han Hsin, and infuriated by
what he considered the treachery of Li I-chi, ordered the unfortunate envoy to be
boiled alive.

It also appears that boiling was used as a means of execution in Japan
during the first thousand years after the death of Christ.
However, few of these accounts have been translated from the
original Japanese.
A fictionalized account appears in James Clavell's novel, Shogun.
In this account, a European explorer meets his end in a pot
of boiling water after the local leaders decide the explorers may
be pirates or spies.

In India and north Asia, there are several accounts of
boiling prisoners as a means of religious persecution.
The following is a short excerpt from a historical
account of the fate of Guru Tegh Bahadur [3]:

Guru Tegh Bahadur was subjected to many cruelties, he was kept in an iron cage and starved for many days. The Guru was
made to watch as Bhai Mati Das the devoted Sikh was tied between two pillars and his body split in two by being sawn
alive. Bhai Dyala was boiled alive in a cauldron of boiling water and Bhat Sati Das was wrapped in cotton wool and set on
fire. The Guru bore these cruelties without flinching or showing any anger or distress. Finally on November 11, 1675
Guru Tegh Bahadur was publicly beheaded with the sword of the executioner as he prayed.

The use of boiling for religious persecution was not confined
to Asia.
Early Christians in the first through third centuries A.D. were often put to death
for their beliefs by the Romans.
One mode of death for such men and women was by boiling.
As an example, the woodcut drawing above was taken from The Tortures of
Christian Martyrs.

Many people shutter when they hear the phrase "boiled in oil".
This phrase appears to have its origin in the Middle East
(especially Eygpt).
Perhaps due to a relative lack of water, boiling prisoners
in the middle east was often done in vats of boiling oil.
Oil has a much higher boiling point than water and one
can only imagine the cruelty of such a fate.

In England, boiling prisoners to death was a legal form
of punishment during the years under the rule of
Henry VIII [2]:

Boiling to death was legal punishment in the olden time, though
instances of its exercise were not so frequent in the annals of
crime as some of the other modes of execution.
In the year 1531, when Henry VIII was King, an Act was passed
for boiling prisoners to death.
The Act details the case of one Richard Roose, or Coke, a cook
in the diocese of the Bishop of Rochester, who had, by putting
poison in the food of several persons, occasioned the death of two,
and the serious illness of others.
He was found guilty of treason, and sentenced to be boiled to
death without the benefit of clergy; that is, that no abatement
of sentence was to be made on account of his eccesiastical
connection, nor to be allowed any indemnity such as was commonly
the privelege of clerical offenders.
He was brought to punishment at Smithfield, on the 15th of
April, 1532; and the Act ordained that all manner of prisoners
should meet with the same doom henceforth.
A maid-servant, in 1531, was boiled to death in the market-place
of King's Lynn, for the crime of poisoning her mistress.
Margaret Davy, a maid-servant, for poisoning persons with
whom she had lived, perished at Smithfield on March 28th, 1542.
The Act was repealed in the year 1547.

The punishment had been common both in England and on the
Continent before its precise enforcement by Henry's Act.
It has frequent mention as a punishment for coining.
The "Chronicle of the Grey Friars of London" (published
by the Camden Society) has an account of a case at Smithfield,
in which a man was fastened to a chain and let down into
boiling water several times until he was dead.

We see that there is ample evidence that boiling people
alive was relatively common in ancient times in
many different areas.
Why was boiling used as a form of execution? It
is hard to say.
In earlier times when life expectancy was lower,
there was a smaller value placed on life.
With a lower resistance to taking life,
revenge was often left unfettered when criminals were
brought to justice.
Boiling a particularly depraved criminal to death was
probably seen as just punishment for his crimes.
But the most likely reason boiling was used as
a form of capital punishment is fear.
Governments and religious leaders of the time often
ruled by force and fear.
Those that opposed leaders of the time were punished
severely to discourage others from following in their
footsteps.
In the dark recesses of the mind, we all have a natural
fear of live boiling as a form of punishment.
It is precisely because we all recognize the horrible
nature of this fate that leaders of the time found it
a useful tool for controlling their people.

It is hard to even imagine the fear of a prisoner, drawn
to the scaffold, only to see a seething, boiling pot of
water awaiting him or her.
The terror of such a situation must have been unbearable and
the cruelty of a death in the pot unmeasurable.
It is precisely this primitive reaction to this horrible
fate that makes the study of the subject fascinating.